Journal articles on the topic 'Epistocrazia'
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1
Blunt, Gwilym David. "The case for epistocratic republicanism." Politics 40, no. 3 (November 22, 2019): 363–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263395719889563.
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In recent years, the fortunes of democracy have waned both in theory and practice. This has added impetus not only to the republican case for strengthening democratic institutions but also to new anti-democratic thought. This article examines the claim made by Jason Brennan that epistocracy, rule by the ‘knowledgeable’, is compatible with freedom from domination. It begins by briefly explaining epistocracy and republicanism. It then presents the argument for epistocratic republicanism: that democracy can be a source of domination and that freedom from domination can be secured through non-democratic political institutions. The case against epistocratic republicanism is grounded in concerns about systemic domination and the ability of epistocrats to arbitrarily set the terms of social cooperation. These two arguments are judged on the basis of which better minimises domination while respecting its value to all people. Epistocratic republicanism is found to be less reliable because of the risks of epistemic injustice that accompanies systemic domination; democracy, accompanied by other republican institutions, is better at minimising domination and respecting persons. It concludes that republicans ought to be democrats.
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Edmundson, William A. "POLITICAL EQUALITY, EPISTOCRACY, AND EXPENSIVE TASTES." Lua Nova: Revista de Cultura e Política, no. 117 (September 2022): 55–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0102-055070/117.
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Abstract Democracy and equality are different concepts. There are two fundamentally different ways of relating them. The first way defines democracy in terms of substantive political equality: the purest form of democracy is a regime in which each citizen (at any given level of aptitude and motivation) has equal influence over political decisions, regardless of the citizen’s wealth and other resources. The second way renders democracy as a device for assuring equality (or justice) by some measure external to the process by which political decisions are made. According to this second way, political equality -democracy’s defining trait on the first view- is at best of secondary importance. John Rawls is the most prominent exponent of the first way, and Ronald Dworkin and David Estlund of the second. This article explores the differences between the two ways, and concludes with the thought that the failure to appreciate how different they are contributes to our currrent democratic malaise.
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Vandamme, Pierre-Étienne. "What’s wrong with an epistocratic council?" Politics 40, no. 1 (March 26, 2019): 90–105. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263395719836348.
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Epistemic justifications of democracy affirm the comparative quality of democracies’ decisions. The challenge faced by those who endorse such views is to explain why we should prefer standard democratic institutions to some sort of epistocracy or rule of the wisest. This article takes up this challenge by assessing the epistemic potential of an epistocratic council, as imagined by Jason Brennan. Members of such council would be selected through competency exams, the required competencies being defined by the whole population. The argument defended in this article is that the potential gain in instrumental rationality that such an institution could offer under certain questionable conditions would be outweighed by the increased risks of misrule and involuntary biases if such council has decision-making or veto power. In comparison with the existing literature, this argument stresses the importance of moral rightness, here defined as impartiality, in the epistemic assessment of democracy and its alternatives. The article then ends with a qualified assessment of purely epistemic justifications of democratic inclusion, which could be insufficient to reject implausible but imaginable forms of epistemically justifiable disenfranchisement.
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García Valiña, Luis. "Democráticamente equivocados: ignorancia del votante, epistocracia y experimentalismo democrático." REVISTA LATINOAMERICANA DE FILOSOFÍA 46, no. 1 (June 8, 2020): 7–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.36446/rlf2020195.
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La ignorancia y la irracionalidad del ciudadano democrático promedio ha preocupado a los teóricos desde la época de Sócrates. Recientemente, y a la luz de la evidencia surgida de la investigación empírica, una nueva oleada de pensamiento epistocrático ha comenzado a emerger. En este trabajo se analizan algunas de las posiciones centrales de los “nuevos epistócratas” para afirmar que, aunque atendibles, dichas posiciones fallan en considerar los fenómenos mencionados en su dimensión sistémica y social y por ello sus propuestas de innovación institucional resultan desencaminadas. En segundo lugar, se sostiene que una orientación tal permitiría apreciar el concepto de aprendizaje como central para evaluar la capacidad epistémica de un sistema deliberativo. Por último, se ofrecen algunos ejemplos acerca de programas de investigación y diseños institucionales que podrían satisfacer el criterio de capacidad epistémica como aprendizaje.
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Chou, Mark. "Combatting voter ignorance: a vertical model of epistocratic voting." Policy Studies 38, no. 6 (October 5, 2017): 589–603. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2017.1384544.
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LANDA, DIMITRI, and RYAN PEVNICK. "Representative Democracy as Defensible Epistocracy." American Political Science Review 114, no. 1 (September 9, 2019): 1–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0003055419000509.
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Epistocratic arrangements are widely rejected because there will be reasonable disagreement about which citizens count as epistemically superior and an epistemically superior subset of citizens may be biased in ways that undermine their ability to generate superior political outcomes. The upshot is supposed to be that systems of democratic government are preferable because they refuse to allow some citizens to rule over others. We show that this approach is doubly unsatisfactory: although representative democracy cannot be defended as a form of government that prevents some citizens from ruling over others, it can be defended as a special form of epistocracy. We demonstrate that well-designed representative democracies can, through treatment and selection mechanisms, bring forth an especially competent set of individuals to make public policy, even while circumventing the standard objections to epistocratic rule. This has implications for the justification of representative democracy and questions of institutional design.
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Kalkan, Buğra, and Pınar Ebe Güzgü. "Epistocracy vs constitutional democracy: A Hayekian response to Jason Brannan." Masyarakat, Kebudayaan dan Politik 36, no. 1 (February 13, 2023): 44–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.20473/mkp.v36i12023.44-57.
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Jason Brennan, who proposes assessing democratic decisions based on non-procedural expert knowledge from a pure utilitarian standpoint, holds a prominent position among libertarian critiques of democracy. Brennan contends that epistocratic regimes can outperform democracies since democracies perform badly due to the phenomena of rational ignorance and deliberative democratic methods cannot solve this problem. Brennan, who compares epistocratic institutions to constitutional institutions, wants to tame democracies using negative externality arguments. In this study, we demonstrate that constitutional democracies cannot be assessed by the Brennanian metrics and that epistocracy will erode the libertarian political successes of constitutional democracy. Two important arguments back up this conclusion. First, transforming libertarian ideals beyond constitutional rules into the standard for daily politics allows experts tremendous discretion. Even with good intentions, the unchecked discretion of experts would most likely undermine the general, abstract, and egalitarian rules required by a complex society. Second, taking the concept of rational choice out of its original context will make the distinction between constitutional and unconstitutional governments unclear. Therefore, the libertarian ideal of the limited government established by the separation of powers and the procedures of checks and balances would lose its significance, giving place to the unchecked discretion of expert rule.
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Aligica. "Civic Competence, Self-Governance, and the New Epistocratic Paternalism: An Ostromanian Perspective." Good Society 26, no. 2-3 (2018): 202. http://dx.doi.org/10.5325/goodsociety.26.2-3.0202.
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Friedman, Jeffrey. "The Problem of Epistocratic Identification and the (Possibly) Dysfunctional Division of Epistemic Labor." Critical Review 29, no. 3 (July 3, 2017): 293–327. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2017.1410979.
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Gagnon, Jean-Paul, and Mark Chou. "Editorial." Democratic Theory 5, no. 1 (June 1, 2018): v—vii. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/dt.2018.050101.
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This issue begins with Peter Strandbrink’s argument that “standard liberal democratic theory should be pressed significantly harder to recognize the lexical and conceptual fact that civic political and cognitive participation in mass liberal democracies belong to different theoretical species.” It is by conflating both of these theoretical species, which Strandbrink sees as the dominant tendency in contemporary democratic theory, that we inhibit our ability to critically evaluate “epistocratic theoretical registers.” Further unsettling is Stranbrink’s view that, once separated from each other, neither the theories of civic political or cognitive participation offer much help in dealing with the rise of “alt-facts” or “post-truth” in liberal democratic societies today.
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Standbrink, Peter. "Epistocracy and Democratic Participation in a Post-Truth World." Democratic Theory 5, no. 1 (June 1, 2018): 1–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/dt.2018.050102.
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This article investigates civic-political and cognitive participation as they play out in democratic theory. Its core purpose is to develop a conceptual-normative critique of the presupposition in liberal democratic theory that these logics are mutually reinforcing and complementary. This misunderstanding of a theoretical ambivalence contributes to inhibiting constructive assessment of epistocratic*technocratic frameworks of democratic interpretation and theory. I demonstrate that these logics circulate contrasting views of democratic power and legitimacy and should be disentangled to make sense of liberal democratic theoretical and political spaces. This critique is then fed into a political-epistemological interrogation of post-truth and alt-facts rhetorical registers in contemporary liberal democratic life, concluding that neither logic of participation can harbor this unanticipated and fundamentally nonaligned way of doing liberal democratic democracy.
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Van der Haak, Donovan. "The Incompatibility of Moral Relativism and Brennan’s Argument for Epistocracy." Politikon: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science 54 (September 30, 2022): 22–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.22151/politikon.54.2.
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In Against Democracy, Brennan argues in favor of restricting suffrage, proposing epistocracy. He argues political power should not be held by incompetent and morally unreasonable people (i.e., the competence principle) and that epistocracy would create more just outcomes than democracy. However, Brennan assumes his argument is compatible with different meta-ethical frameworks. In this article, I examine the extent to which his argument is challenged by meta-ethical moral relativism, aiming to answer the following central research question: what are the repercussions of meta-ethical moral relativism for Brennan’s use of the competence principle and the creation of just outcomes as an argument in favor of epistocracy over democracy? I argue that democracy better satisfies Brennan’s own principles compared to epistocracy, for the epistocratic reliance on experts renders epistocracy inherently incapable of collecting sufficient information about moral facts from the right voting population.
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Copello, David. "Critical citizenship at work: the intriguing combination of democratic and epistocratic criticism of representation in French public opinion." French Politics 17, no. 4 (November 4, 2019): 433–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41253-019-00096-4.
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SCHIAVONE, GIUSEPPE, MATTEO MAMELI, and GIOVANNI BONIOLO. "Epistocracy for Online Deliberative Bioethics." Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 24, no. 3 (June 10, 2015): 272–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0963180114000590.
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Abstract:The suggestion that deliberative democratic approaches would suit the management of bioethical policymaking in democratic pluralistic societies has triggered what has been called the “deliberative turn” in health policy and bioethics. Most of the empirical work in this area has focused on the allocation of healthcare resources and priority setting at the local or national level. The variety of the more or less articulated theoretical efforts behind such initiatives is remarkable and has been accompanied, to date, by an overall lack of method specificity. We propose a set of methodological requirements for online deliberative procedures for bioethics. We provide a theoretical motivation for these requirements. In particular, we discuss and adapt an “epistocratic” proposal and argue that, regardless of its merits as a general political theory, a more refined version of its normative claims can generate a useful framework for the design of bioethical forums that combine maximal inclusiveness with informed and reasonable deliberation.
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Parvin, Phil. "Representing the People: British Democracy in an Age of Political Ignorance." Political Studies Review 16, no. 4 (March 14, 2018): 265–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1478929918758572.
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The article evaluates the arguments presented in Jason Brennan’s Against Democracy, Ilya Somin’s Democracy and Political Ignorance and Achen and Bartels’ Democracy for Realists and their implications for democratic theory and practice. The article uses their work to shine a light on ongoing and contradictory trajectories of democratic reform in Britain at the local and national levels, and to argue against the widespread view that British democracy should be reformed in ways that give citizens more control over political decisions. These books point to ways in which democracy might be salvaged, rather than replaced, and in which British democracy in particular might be reformed in order to better meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, by focusing less on participation and more on representation. This requires a two-pronged strategy. First, that we reform liberal democratic institutions in ways which better harness the power of non-majoritarian institutions, strengthen formal epistocratic checks and balances, and embrace the move towards greater political elitism in order to appropriately constrain the popular will and to ensure rigorous scrutiny within a traditionally configured representative democratic system. Second, that we explore ways of incorporating citizens’ voices at different points in the democratic system in order to circumvent some of the problems these authors describe and to ensure that the strengthening of representative institutions does not unfairly marginalise citizens. Achen CH and Bartels LM (2016) Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Brennan J (2016) Against Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Somin I (2016) Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, 2nd edn. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
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Gibbons, Adam. "Is Epistocracy Irrational?" Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 21, no. 2 (February 28, 2022). http://dx.doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v21i2.1581.
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Proponents of epistocracy worry that high levels of voter ignorance can harm democracies. To combat such ignorance, they recommend allocating comparatively more political power to more politically knowledgeable citizens. In response, some recent critics of epistocracy contend that epistocratic institutions risk causing even more harm, since much evidence from political psychology indicates that more politically knowledgeable citizens are typically more biased, less open-minded, and more prone to motivated reasoning about political matters than their less knowledgeable counterparts. If so, perhaps epistocratic institutions will perform worse epistemically than corresponding democratic institutions. Call this 'the problem of epistocratic irrationality'. This paper argues that the problem of epistocratic irrationality can be overcome. First, I argue that critics of epistocracy have overlooked several complications regarding the psychological data they claim shows that more knowledgeable citizens are less politically rational. Second, I argue that appropriately designed epistocratic institutions could overcome the problem of epistocratic irrationality even if such critics have interpreted the data correctly. I first explore whether refined selection mechanisms could allow epistocrats to avoid empowering less rational citizens, before assessing the prospects of implementing only those epistocratic institutions with a solid track record of reliable performance.
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Bhatia, Udit. "Indirect elections as a constitutional device of epistocracy." International Journal of Constitutional Law, April 17, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/icon/moac001.
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Abstract Recent political events around the world have led some to advocate replacing democratic institutions with an “epistocracy” (rule by the competent). Offering a historical perspective on this debate, this article explores the neglected constitutional device of indirect elections and its use as an epistocratic mechanism. These are elections where representatives are selected by intermediary electors, rather than directly by voters. Drawing on the United States and India as case studies, I argue that such elections were historically defended as epistocratic mechanisms, aimed at securing the selection of representatives with superior virtue or ability. The epistocratic case for indirect election, however, attracted critics in both countries. While such critics presented a compelling case against the reliance on indirect election to select superior legislators, their arguments generated a further dilemma, opening representative democracy itself—direct and indirect—to challenge.
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Manor, Aylon. "Polycentric Limited Epistocracy: Political Expertise and the Wiki-Model." Episteme, February 18, 2020, 1–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/epi.2020.3.
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Abstract Democracy has recently been criticized by several philosophers on grounds of poor epistemic performance. The proposed alternative – epistocracy – faces criticism for failing to uphold and express the core democratic values of civic equality and individual autonomy. In response, proposals have been offered that try to achieve epistocratic performance while retaining democratic inclusion. This paper raises two problems for such proposals, relating to the selection of experts and the incentive-compatibility of the system. Given these failures, I sketch what I call the Wiki-Model. I argue that the Wiki-Model (i) has desirable epistemic properties; (ii) realizes our democratic ideals; while also (iii) avoiding the two problems that other hybrid models face.
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Finkel, David Bryan. "An Epistocratic System of Government: Meeting the Demands of the Modern World by Empowering Adroit Leaders." PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION REVIEW 7, no. 2 (2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.15640/ppar.v7n2a3.
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Brennan, Jason, and Christopher Freiman. "Why Paternalists Must Endorse Epistocracy." Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 21, no. 3 (March 28, 2022). http://dx.doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v21i3.926.
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Recent findings from psychology and behavioral economics suggest that we are “predictably irrational” in the pursuit of our interests. Paternalists from both the social sciences and philosophy use these findings to defend interfering with people's consumption choices for their own good. We should tax soda, ban cigarettes, and mandate retirement savings to make people healthier and wealthier than they’d be on their own. Our thesis is that the standard arguments offered in support of restricting people’s consumption choices for their own good also imply support for “epistocratic” restrictions on people’s voting choices for their own good. Indeed, the philosophical case for paternalistic restrictions on voting choices may be stronger than the case for restricting personal consumption choices. So, paternalists face a dilemma: either endorse less interference with consumption choices or more interference with voting choices.
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Litwack, Eric. "Epistemic arguments against dictatorship." Human Affairs 21, no. 1 (January 1, 2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/s13374-011-0006-8.
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AbstractIn this article I examine what I term epistemic arguments against epistocratic dictatorships against the background of Harry Frankfurt’s claim that truth is a fundamental governing notion, and some key reflections of Václav Havel and Leszek Kolakowski. Some of the key epistemic arguments offered by Karl Popper, Robert A. Dahl and Ross Harrison are outlined and endorsed. They underscore the insurmountable problems involved in choosing and maintaining a state of allegedly perfectly wise and efficient rulers. Such rule by virtue of supposed supreme knowledge and expertise denies a truthful recognition of the inevitable fallibility of the state, and of government policies. Moreover, the repression of both citizens’ commitment to truthfulness and their attempts at political falsification will necessarily render dictatorships both continually prone to error and inevitably oppressive. Fallibilistic epistemology is thus seen as a formidable philosophical arsenal for anti-totalitarian and democratic thought, alongside ethical and historical arguments against dictatorship.
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Lafont, Cristina. "A militant defence of democracy: A few replies to my critics." Philosophy & Social Criticism, December 21, 2020, 019145372097472. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0191453720974727.
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In this essay, I address some questions and challenges brought about by the contributors to this special issue on my book ‘ Democracy without Shortcuts’. First, I clarify different aspects of my critique of deep pluralist conceptions of democracy to highlight the core incompatibilities with the participatory conception of deliberative democracy that I defend in the book. Second, I distinguish different senses of the concept of ‘blind deference’ that I use in the book to clarify several aspects and consequences of my critique of epistocratic conceptions of democracy and their search for ‘expertocratic shortcuts’. This in turn helps me briefly address the difficult question of the proper role of experts in a democracy. Third, I address potential uses of empowered minipublics that I did not discuss in the book and highlight some reasons to worry about their lack of accountability. This discussion in turn leads me to address the difficult question of which institutions are best suited to represent the transgenerational collective people who are supposed to own a constitutional project. Finally, I address some interesting suggestions for how to move the book’s project forward.
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Arlen, Gordon, and Enzo Rossi. "Must Realists Be Pessimists About Democracy? Responding to Epistemic and Oligarchic Challenges." Moral Philosophy and Politics, September 25, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/mopp-2019-0060.
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AbstractIn this paper we show how a realistic normative democratic theory can work within the constraints set by the most pessimistic empirical results about voting behaviour and elite capture of the policy process. After setting out the empirical evidence and discussing some extant responses by political theorists, we argue that the evidence produces a two-pronged challenge for democracy: an epistemic challenge concerning the quality and focus of decision-making and an oligarchic challenge concerning power concentration. To address the challenges we then put forward three main normative claims, each of which is compatible with the evidence. We start with (1) a critique of the epistocratic position commonly thought to be supported by the evidence. We then introduce (2) a qualified critique of referenda and other forms of plebiscite, and (3) an outline of a tribune-based system of popular control over oligarchic influence on the policy process. Our discussion points towards a renewal of democracy in a plebeian but not plebiscitarian direction: Attention to the relative power of social classes matters more than formal dispersal of power through voting. We close with some methodological reflections about the compatibility between our normative claims and the realist program in political philosophy.
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Graves, Stephen. "Elitism in Democracy." Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, November 15, 2021, 1–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1742058x21000369.
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Abstract The concept of the common good represents those resources that are good for an entire group as a whole, or what preserves what the people or inhabitants of the national community have in common. The “good” are those things that benefit the community as a whole; lead to the protection, sustainment, and improvement of the community. Theorists agree that it is the ultimate end of government; the good of all its citizens and void of special interests. Theories of the common good are discussed in this paper with implications regarding the shortcomings of democratic political institutions and structures. The theoretical framework provided by the political thought of W. E. B. Du Bois and Friedrich Nietzsche are used to critically examine the idea of the common good in contemporary democratic societies. Du Bois sought an objective truth that could dispel once and for all the irrational prejudices and ignorances that stood in the way of a just social order for African Americans. Nietzsche’s political theory was primarily concerned with disdain for democracy and the need for Aristocratic forms and social ordering. He was skeptical that with the demise of religion, it would be possible to achieve an effective normative consensus in society at large which is needed to legitimize government authority. Both theorists agree that the exceptional and great individuals are few in society and should govern in favor of the masses. Based on their example, this paper argues that both authors are suggesting an Epistocratic form of government where those with political knowledge are privileged.